Even though my family are extremely supportive, they are not as motivated about my business as I am which is understandable. Of course they want me to be and depend on me to some extent be successful. And it took me years of basically saying’ you watch I know what to do now to make money online’.

Then there was another learning curve and yet another and another..

And you know what..

It never ends!

If you are inclined to learn and implement..

Learning is a never ending process. You can always learn and apply more. But there comes a time when you have to stop kidding yourself and actually implement what you have learned already and start enjoying the journey.

It’s a known fact that most people who buy books don’t read them all. People who like to read probably buy more books than they have time to read. And others may not always read a full book.

People who do read books and learn something new, probably never take action on what gained from the book. The knowledge is stored but never acted upon and most books are left to gather dust and usually forgotten about.

This is a generalization of course.

But the fact is that to enter ANY market you have to implement. You need to take action and you need to have something unique. Even if you take action and you don’t know if the action you are taking is the right one, taking some action is better than taking no action.

If you do actually take action and follow through you are probably 90% ahead of everyone else, because based on the 80/20 rule, most people simply don’t take action.

Compare this to learning to drive a car. You can read the books, watch videos and be an ‘armchair expert’, but you won’t actually learn to be an expert driver let alone a competent driver unless you actually get behind the wheel and do something.

So whether it’s selling on eBay, Amazon, through ecommerce channels or through other channels and in any market, you need to walk before you can run and actually do start doing something. I’m sure you’ll agree you can learn basics but you can’t become an expert or even proficient unless you start doing something and actually start ‘trying’ stuff.

Here’s something else I hear often..

“If every market is already too competitive then why even bother trying”.

Here’s why..

Take music for example..

I’m kind of eclectic so I tend to like all kinds of different music. But what if every musician out there said..

“I’m not going to write or release a new song because there are already too many musicians in the world and the market is already flooded with music”.

Of course that wouldn’t happen, because in reality there are so many different kinds of music styles and unlimited possibilities for new music to be created and people who like ‘creating’ and ‘adding value’ do it because it’s in their blood.

I have always said that the key to winning is having something different to offer. You don’t have to be radically different, you just need to be at the least fractionally different. Just different enough so that you, your music or your products are unique.

The same can be said for any market you enter on the internet. Be unique and make your products stand out – they only have to be slightly different to existing products to be unique enough to be winning products in their own right. This actually works better in competitive markets.

The good news is that it doesn’t take long to discover new ideas and strategies once you immerse yourself in a market.

What can you do to make your products that little bit different and what actions you will you commit to this week and actually complete..

Recently I’ve been posting about hiring employees and I’m quite grateful for my customer service manager who has now taken over 100% of my customer services for my online business. It’s ok to receive a few emails each day that need your attention however when your business begins to increase, customer service can become a full time job for someone. The goal is for ‘that someone’, not to be you.

Of course customer services is an extremely important part of eBay and ecommerce and it needs to be supervised and managed however you shouldn’t be the one doing it.

If you are serious about your business, your time is worth much more.

I can’t tell you how much time it has saved me and to be honest how much of a weight was lifted from my shoulders. Customer service is not difficult (no disrespect to customer service people), because it is time consuming and requires effort and can drain your brain when you are constantly keeping customers pleased.

That brought me to another problem. I have customer services covered and as I mentioned in a previous post ‘How much is your time really worth’ my fulfilment is managed externally. That leaves me with more time to grow my business. I’ve had success with a customer services manager however finding and keeping a good web developer is another animal altogether.

I have hired and fired 4 web developers in one month and hopefully the guy I have working on my websites now will be the one, ‘fingers crossed’. Apparently it wasn’t totally the fault of the 4 guys I had to let go. You see hiring employees was relatively new to me and I was looking in the wrong places for that type of qualified worker who I could rely on.

How do I know?

Because I asked an expert. I asked a mentor and coach who had already been there and done it a successfully a thousand times over.

Did I pay for that advice?

I certainly did.

I believe there is a lot of good free information floating around out there, but how do you know who to trust. How do you know they really have been there and done it. Another thing is valuing your time. I value my time and instead of wasting hours trudging the forums, I would much rather pay up front for the right information when I need it.

I wish I had taken my own advice and asked an expert BEFORE attempting to hire 5 web developers.

OK, so my point is..

Save time and pain by asking an expert who’s been there and who can answer your specific questions right when you need them answered. There are many eBay sellers and e commerce businesses who ‘spin their wheels’ far too long and the Personal One-on-One eBay coaching is available if you find your climbing boots are glued to the starting line.

Like I do, If you need a question answered that could save you months and want to get traction, find a coach and get the answers you need right there and then. A coach not only provides the answers, an accountability partner can prevent temporary insanity in the sometimes ‘crazy’ world of the internet!

In my last post – I mentioned one way to build an online business. Today I’ve been looking at some of the best Search Engine Optimization practices to have my team of guys work on. I’ve done some SEO myself in the past and I’ve always used ‘white hat’ SEO. This has included manually submitting content about your site on other sites and your own site and building natural links back to your main sites. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, however it’s a good place to start.

I also have an SEO Hosting account which allows you to host different websites with different IP addresses so your websites are not all linked together with the same IP (Internet Protocol) address.

SEO Hosting belong to Hostgator, the best hosting provider in my opinion.

I’ve never used any automation software except I must admit to using an article spinner on a few occasions. Anyhow, I’ll get to the point. I found this information over at the warrior forum..

It gives you a complete run down on search engine optimization and I thought it would be useful to share this with you.

You have to be careful on the warrior forum because you can end up buying lots of stuff you don’t need but some of the information is really useful if you are doing anything online.

The second thing I wanted to share today is the importance of having Googles plus one button on your site. This is something Google is trying out a bit like a Facebook ‘Like’ button. My prediction is that once Google has enough data from the ‘+1’ button’ votes this will play a part in how Google arranges it’s most popular pages in the search engines.

If you have a blog you can simply install the ‘Googles Plus One Button’ widget.

To try it out, and If you think this information is useful, hit the + 1 button here on the left..

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